About

Martin Fischer is the Kumagai Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. His professional biography on the Stanford Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty page lists his titles but does not provide further details about his research focus, background, or key contributions.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Finance
• World Wide Web
• Business
• Engineering
• Marketing
• Database
• Industrial organization
• Human–computer interaction
• Risk analysis (engineering)
• Commerce

Selected publications

• A Mobile Robotic Approach to Autonomous Surface Scanning in Legal Medicine

  ArXiv.org · 2025-02-20

  preprintOpen access

  Purpose: Comprehensive legal medicine documentation includes both an internal but also an external examination of the corpse. Typically, this documentation is conducted manually during conventional autopsy. A systematic digital documentation would be desirable, especially for the external examination of wounds, which is becoming more relevant for legal medicine analysis. For this purpose, RGB surface scanning has been introduced. While a manual full surface scan using a handheld camera is timeconsuming and operator dependent, floor or ceiling mounted robotic systems require substantial space and a dedicated room. Hence, we consider whether a mobile robotic system can be used for external documentation. Methods: We develop a mobile robotic system that enables full-body RGB-D surface scanning. Our work includes a detailed configuration space analysis to identify the environmental parameters that need to be considered to successfully perform a surface scan. We validate our findings through an experimental study in the lab and demonstrate the system's application in a legal medicine environment. Results: Our configuration space analysis shows that a good trade-off between coverage and time is reached with three robot base positions, leading to a coverage of 94.96 %. Experiments validate the effectiveness of the system in accurately capturing body surface geometry with an average surface coverage of 96.90 +- 3.16 % and 92.45 +- 1.43 % for a body phantom and actual corpses, respectively. Conclusion: This work demonstrates the potential of a mobile robotic system to automate RGB-D surface scanning in legal medicine, complementing the use of post-mortem CT scans for inner documentation. Our results indicate that the proposed system can contribute to more efficient and autonomous legal medicine documentation, reducing the need for manual intervention.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A case study towards assessing the impact of mixed reality-based inspection and resolution of MEP issues during construction

  Journal of Information Technology in Construction · 2025-04-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Despite advances in 3D clash detection during preconstruction, mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) installations are still prone to the detection of unforeseen clashes during construction. These issues must be resolved as quickly as possible to prevent significant schedule delays. Through interviews and field observations, this case study investigates the impact of mixed reality (MR) on the inspection and resolution of field-detected MEP issues from product, organization, and process (POP) perspectives. For the product impact, preliminary findings from the field interviews show that MR-based inspection would increase the quality of MEP installation by identifying errors easily and resolving them faster. For the organizational impact, we modeled and compared the current (as-is) and MR-integrated (to-be) MEP field issue resolution workflows using Business Process Model and Notation and determined that MR-based inspections can decrease the coordination overhead between MEP engineers and superintendents by up to 75%. This translates into at least a 50% faster resolution of an MEP issue for the process impact. The paper contributes to the practice of MR-based field inspection by providing a method to quantify potential time savings by integrating MR into the MEP field issue resolution workflow and field interview questions for MEP engineers and superintendents to further examine the use of MR during inspection activities in construction projects. Our observations of MEP superintendents and engineers during field inspection showed that not all building information visualized in MR is useful for their inspection tasks. We developed a classification for building information usefulness to help construction project managers who are deploying MR determine useful information for the task at hand that needs to be integrated into the 3D MR model for MR-based inspections.

  PublisherDOI

• Ausnahmslose Bindung einer ärztlichen Zwangsmaßnahme an einen stationären Krankenhausaufenthalt — Unvereinbarkeit mit Grundrecht auf körperliche Unversehrtheit

  Monatsschrift für Deutsches Recht · 2025-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Article Ausnahmslose Bindung einer ärztlichen Zwangsmaßnahme an einen stationären Krankenhausaufenthalt — Unvereinbarkeit mit Grundrecht auf körperliche Unversehrtheit was published on January 1, 2025 in the journal Monatsschrift für Deutsches Recht (volume 79, issue 2).

  PublisherDOI

• Ontology-Based Modeling and Reasoning for Construction Field Context

  Journal of Management in Engineering · 2025-10-28

  articleSenior author

  The increasing prevalence of mobile computing on construction sites has introduced new opportunities to improve communication and coordination among field crews. Despite advancements in mobile computing, the full potential of these innovations remains underutilized due to the lack of adaptation to construction-specific field context information and the heterogeneity of context information generated from diverse sources. Existing approaches have yet to establish a standardized, semantically rich framework to effectively manage and integrate construction context information. To address this gap, this study proposes the construction context information (CCI) model, a comprehensive ontology, encoded by the web ontology language (OWL), that is designed to represent and manage construction field context in a structured manner. The CCI model incorporates 17 validated context dimensions, capturing the attributes and interrelationships essential for construction workflows. In addition, the model includes a set of reasoning rules to infer high-level context information from low-level data input, enabling real-time decision making. A task-based evaluation approach is adopted to assess the model’s effectiveness in practical construction scenarios, ensuring that it meets the specific needs of field operations. By providing a universal, interoperable framework of field context information, the CCI model facilitates seamless integration of mobile computing technologies, supports knowledge sharing and reuse, and enables context-aware reasoning for construction teams. This research demonstrates the potential of the CCI model to transform the way context information is used on construction sites, ultimately improving project outcomes through better-informed decision-making and optimized operational efficiency.

  PublisherDOI

• Poster Abstract: VibraFarrow - Pig Farrowing Time Prediction Using Ambient Floor Vibrations

  2025-11-11

  article

  Farrowing, the onset of parturition in sows, is critical for both sows and piglets. Accurate prediction of farrowing time enables timely intervention to reduce stillbirths, but existing methods have limitations: cameras require constant lighting that disrupts pigs' circadian rhythms, while wearable sensors cause discomfort to animals. We present VibraFarrow, a non-intrusive system that senses floor vibrations in pig pens to predict whether a sow will farrow within 20 hours. The main challenge is the highly uncertain timing, duration, types, and patterns of pre-farrowing behaviors, which complicate feature extraction and prediction. To address this, VibraFarrow introduces Hierarchical Adaptive Window Selection (HAWS) to extract features across multiple time scales, applies unsupervised clustering to capture implicit behavior indicators, and fuses these with expert-defined features such as heart and respiration rates. We deployed VibraFarrow on a commercial farm for seven months, monitoring 18 farrowing events and 384 hours of vibration data. The system achieved a weighted F1-score of 0.735, outperforming baselines by up to 20% and demonstrating floor vibration sensing as an effective method for farrowing prediction and management.

  PublisherDOI

• Author Correction: A Large-Scale Image Repository for Automated Pavement Distress Analysis and Degradation Trend Prediction

  Scientific Data · 2025-10-09

  erratumOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Practical Challenges in Assessing Embodied Carbon and Cost Trade-offs in the Design Phase: Insights from a Residential Building Project

  CIB Conferences · 2025-06-19

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Environmental sustainability has become a core value for many companies in the construction industry. However, while methodologies and tools for carbon accounting are available, design decisions are still primarily driven by cost rather than carbon considerations. One reason for this lies in the timing and availability of data. Cost estimates are collected early and refined throughout the design phase, which supports decision-making. In contrast, carbon data is often unavailable or difficult to gather, rarely updated, and collected late when most design decisions have already been finalized. This misalignment poses practical challenges to effectively integrating carbon and cost assessments into the decision-making process throughout the entire design phase. This study investigates the root causes of delays and challenges in assessing a building's embodied carbon during the design development and detailed design phases and the difficulties in linking embodied carbon results to costs to support decisions. Using a residential multi-family building project as a case study, we identify key obstacles in 1) collecting Quantity Take Offs (QTO) and carbon impact factors for each building element and 2) linking carbon assessment results with corresponding cost estimates. We found that only 11% of the building’s final carbon impact came from elements with quantities extracted from the Building Information Model (BIM), while 89% relied on 2D drawings or scattered data sources. Additionally, only 20% of the building’s carbon footprint was calculated using product-specific Environmental Product Declaration (EPD), with 80% relying on industry-average EPDs. The embodied carbon assessment was completed only during the detailed design phase, whereas cost estimates were updated in each phase. A further challenge was the misalignment between the carbon breakdown and quotes for many building elements, making it difficult to link carbon impacts with costs for effective decision-making. In addition, the final carbon assessment covered only 55% of the building’s total estimated cost, highlighting an imbalance between the possibility to estimate embodied carbon and cost. To address these challenges, this study recommends: 1) consolidating the number data sources and standardizing quantity estimation procedures, 2) selecting building products early in the design process to use product-specific EPDs, and 3) involving general contractors and subcontractors before the design development phase to estimate quantities and align quotes with carbon breakdown. By identifying practical challenges and providing recommendations, this research takes a step toward integrating carbon considerations into design decisions to increase the chance of achieving sustainability goals.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• VibraFarrow: Pig Farrowing Time Prediction Using Ambient Floor Vibrations

  2025-11-11

  articleOpen access

  Farrowing, the onset of parturition in mother pigs (i.e., sows), is a high-risk period for both the sow and her newborn piglets. Early and accurate prediction of farrowing time, along with monitoring indicators such as vital signs and pre-farrowing behaviors, enables timely assistance and can lead to lower stillbirth rates. However, existing methods have limitations: camera-based systems require constant lighting that disrupts pigs' circadian rhythms, while wearable sensors can cause discomfort to pigs and are prone to be damaged.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bridging Borders: An International and Interprofessional Approach to Planetary Health Education

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Comparison of dusty robotics and traditional layout methods

  Construction Robotics · 2025-09-15 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The use of robots in construction has been rising in recent years. However, limited knowledge is available to understand how robots perform compared to existing processes. Therefore, this research compares the performance of manual layout to Dusty Robotics’ layout robot, an autonomous robot that marks the location of structures to be built and fixtures to be installed on a construction site. Using a Robot Evaluation Framework, we evaluate safety, quality, cost, and schedule performance metrics on drywall, mechanical, plumbing, and electrical layout in an 8-floor medical office building in Los Angeles as a case study. Dusty significantly outperformed manual layout methods across these parameters, resulting in a 68% reduction in total labor hours, an 18% decrease in total days spent performing layout, and a 99% reduction of physically straining work. Accuracy was enhanced by 50%, and design conflicts were identified earlier during the robotic layout process compared to the traditional process. Rework was reduced from 6.42% to 0.25%, a 96% reduction. The research findings suggest avenues to maximize the benefits of robotic layout, such as introducing the robot earlier in the project lifecycle during pre-construction and deploying multiple robots simultaneously. Layout robots present a promising technology for construction contractors to deploy on jobsites to improve project outcomes.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• J. W. Lynn

  64 shared

• P Hawkes Founded

  Brookhaven National Laboratory

  64 shared

• Clyde Kimball

  64 shared

• Jean‐Pierre Müller

  Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement

  64 shared

• W. H. Marlow

  Texas A&M University

  64 shared

• Helmut Lotsch

  Urbana University

  64 shared

• S Bashkin

  Illinois Institute of Technology

  64 shared

• M. B. Maple

  University of California, San Diego

  64 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Stanford University

  1990

• M.S., Civil and Environmental Engineering

  Stanford University

  1985

• B.S., Civil Engineering

  Stanford University

  1983